Donation to boost eye care at Rush

A woman who lost her eye to an infection has made a big donation to help prevent others from going through the same ordeal.

Paige Reichardt and her husband Karl gave Rush University Medical Center $85,000 so the hospital could buy a special piece of equipment to diagnose infections of the anterior eye.

Doctors in the ophthalmology department say the device detects eye problems in the earliest stages.

"We had to rely on clinical intuition - sometimes we were right, sometimes we were wrong, and this is gonna take a lot of the guess work out of what we have to do in terms of treating people with hard-to-diagnose infections instead of starting them out on medications and seeing if they respond to it," said Dr. Randy Epstein of Rush University Medical Center.

Reichardt said the donation is a just a small gift to Rush after all the hospital has done in helping her.